Yes, I read almost every post in these forums, and have done so habitually for years. Our original launch announcement thread on this subject (“What’s up with SketchUp Make”) is now over 900 posts long; you might want to read that one as well for additional posts I have shared on questions and comments similar to yours.
To summarize, I recognize that SketchUp Free is a significant departure from the norm for many of our most loyal SketchUp Make users, and it isn’t yet a fully-featured 100% replacement for a dedicated desktop client application. That said, it offers significant advantages to new/beginning users that shouldn’t be forgotten either.
For folks ( presumably like you) who find the change too jarring or who need some feature we haven’t been able to implement on the web yet, we are leaving SketchUp Make available for download and installation. And of course any copy of SketchUp that you have already installed will keep running until something about your computer/os changes.